It was the young man's turn on this occasion to shade for a moment his eyes with his hands to convince himself of the identity of the young lady; and then as he bounded off the stile, and advanced with outstretched arms, May uttered one low cry of joy, and on the instant felt Dick Loder's strong arms encircle her, and heard Dick Loder's voice whispering loving greetings in her ear.

"I am so sorry, darling, that I've brought you neither the first nor the fellowship," observed the young man, as a few minutes later they sat side by side on the old stile.

"What do I care about the silly things now that I have got you! But," in sudden, "oh, Dick, have you seen my father?"

"He sent me to look for you, sweet one."

"Then bother the first-class and the fellowship too." And with these words the mountain that had been lying like a dead weight on Dick's soul for the last month resolved itself into a very ordinary molehill.

The Rector, after having started the day rather badly himself, found it necessary to recall the ideas of his prospective son-in-law to this matter-of-fact world in the course of the afternoon.

"By the way, young man," he suddenly exclaimed, "have you got any clothes but what you stand up in?"

"Good gracious! I left my portmanteau at the station.” "That is easily redeemed. But may I ask what your intentions were if you had not stopped here to-night?"

"Why, I was going back to Pangbourne, of course. Oh, I say, I must wire to Tom."

And that ill-used individual, who had been hourly expecting the return of his bantling, had his mind set at ease by the information that everything had come right, and that "

were writing.

we"

327

CHAPTER XXVI.

BERTIE.

"IT must be," said the preacher, "that there will come in to the life of every earnest man periods of grave doubt and anxiety,-times when, with two distinct and widely divergent paths of duty lying open before him, he comes to a standstill, and hesitates upon which to enter. There are those who tell us that his will prove in the end the wiser and the sounder choice who chooses that which is the less attractive to himself, that which is the most likely to be beset with thorns and difficulties. And yet, my friends, I would hardly like to go so far as to say this of my own responsibility. For in my journey through life I seem to have come across men, and women too, for whom the very words difficulty and danger would only act as loadstars, men who would rather take their lives in their hands and go straight into the jaws of death than reach the same goal by a less direct and perilous way; women who, in the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-devotion, undertake work that is manifestly beyond their power, and so pre-doomed to failure. Conscience, in many such cases, is a valuable guide, and yet even conscience is not infallible. The gravest errors have before now arisen from an excess of what we call conscientiousness. For there are times when it seems to me that conscience, in her anxiety to be just, errs on the side. of self-severity.

"Justice, said the Greek philosopher, is that habit in respect of which the just man is said to apportion things, not so that he shall get more or too much, and his neighbour less or too little, of what is desirable, and conversely of what is disadvantageous, but so that each shall get his fair-that is, his proportionate share. We have no more right, then, to do an act of injustice to ourselves than to our neighbours. It is well to crucify the inordinate, to mortify the corrupt affections; but surely you and I, dear friends, are not called upon to exist in this world without any affections at all, far less is it desirable or even right to court voluntary martyrdom, whether of the mind or the body, where martyrdom is not required of us. The strong man's temptation too often is to overtax his strength, the brave his powers of resistance.

"Conscience then being a fallible, nay, even in some cases a blind guide, where are we to turn to for guidance ? Hear again the wise words of the heathen philosopher-we need friends when we are young to keep us from error, when we get old to tend upon us and to carry out those plans which we have not strength to execute ourselves, and in the prime of life to help us in noble needs. And yet we may say that there are secrets so sacred that we shrink from laying our souls bare even to our most intimate friend. Must we fall back on ourselves then and our own conscience? As Christians, I say surely not. What does the Prayer Book tell us in the most solemn of all services? If there be any of you who by this means '-self-thought and self-examination, that is 'cannot quiet his own conscience, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him go to a minister of the Gospel and open his grief that he may receive counsel and advice to the quieting of his conscience and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.'

Two minutes later the sermon concluded with the repetition of the text, "Keep innocency, and do the thing that is right, and that shall bring a man peace at the last."

To one listener sitting in Lord Leuchars' pew the concluding words sounded a mere figure of speech.

"I have tried," he thought sadly to himself -"I have tried to do the thing that is right, but where does the peace come in?"

It had seemed to poor little storm-tossed Bertie Treherne that, in almost every word of the sermon, the Rector of Barksworth had been making a personal appeal to himself. He had listened with an intentness with which he had never in the course of his whole life listened to any sermon before, and Betty Lisle, watching his set face, and having already gathered that something was out of tune with one of her dearest friends, had been feeling infinitely sorry for him.

The Rector was not one of those preachers who either call in the aid of rhetorical devices or emphasise their words by excessive gesticulation. His carefully prepared sermons were delivered in a clear, convincing, and rather metallic voice, and he seldom turned his eyes either to the right or to the left, but looked straight in front of him. And so now it had seemed to the unhappy Bertie, who was sitting under him for the first time, that Mr Balfour's gaze was centred upon himself, and that his innermost thoughts were being laid bare to the view of that scrutinising eye.

Bertie had come down, an ever-welcome if on this occasion a self-invited guest, to spend the two or three remaining days. of his leave at the Mote, sorely troubled in spirit, and with the hope that he might find the courage to take his kind host into his confidence and obtain counsel and assistance.

Only three days ago he had awoke one fine morning in his brother's house to find himself standing upon the very brink of a precipice, tottering to a fall that would involve the most. direful consequences. For the fact had suddenly dawned upon him that he was hopelessly and madly in love with his dearest friend's fiancée, Miss Elsie Lauder. In this matter the boy had been the victim of a most untoward chain of circumstances. In the first place, he had been balked of a thing that he had set his heart upon, volunteering for special service in South Africa. It had been hinted to him from an influen

tial quarter that there was a very strong probability of his services being accepted, and it was not until he was on the very point of sending in his application that he discovered that the brother and sister-in-law, the pair who since his father's death had been all-in-all to him, were living in daily and hourly dread of his doing the very thing which he had proposed to himself the pleasure of doing. To the childless couple, Jack Treherne and his wife, the young half-brother had grown inexpressibly dear, and they had lavished upon him all the fondness that under other circumstances might have been lavished upon an only child. There had been nothing that they grudged him. Even now, when they saw that his heart was set upon volunteering, they were preparing themselves to let him go without a murmur or a word of remonstrance.

But the quiet look of despair which came across Jack's face when Bertie mooted the subject had gone straight to the boy's heart.

"You don't like it, Jack?"

"One does not like having a tooth pulled out exactly, my dear boy, especially if it happens to be one's solitary grinder. But go you must if you want to. And Sara and I will do our best to comfort each other in your absence."

And Bertie, reconsidering the position, had chosen what was for him the harder of two paths of duty, and had given up the idea.

In the second place, it was distinctly unfortunate, as matters had fallen out, that Bertie, going to spend his leave at Holmwood while still keenly suffering from the effects of disappointment, should have found in Elsie Lauder, who was staying there, a sweet and sympathetic companion of his own age. The girl was in mourning for her father. There were times when even in that kindly household she was oppressed by the inevitable sense of loneliness; her natural protector, Tom M'Gregor, who had only ventured to come forward and declare his love when he found that the thought of his granddaughter's future was weighing upon Sir Henry Lauder's